Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - FS Machine Advice from DVA Hardware Guru's?

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | FS Machine Advice from DVA Hardware Guru's?

DVA1690
Senior Captain, MD-88
OLP

Joined on May 05 2004
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"Life begins at Vr"
Longmont, CO USA

477 legs, 700.4 hours
468 legs, 686.6 hours online
254 legs, 389.4 hours ACARS
3 legs, 3.9 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 27 2011 13:40 ET by Trevor Bair

Last night, the video card (8800GTX) on my gaming PC died, effectively ending my simming career for a while. While it served me well, I think its time had come. Now, I'm using this as an opportunity to upgrade my system. My goals are:

1) To build a fairly high end FS gaming system for under $1000
2) This machine will facilitate the switch from FS9 to FSX, so I want it to have the power to be able to accomplish that.
3) Many of my FS processes (ActiveSky Evo, ACARS, Charts, browser, etc. will be run from a second PC)
4) See number 1 smile

Can you DVA hardware guru's look over my PC upgrade list below and let me know if you see any glaring incompatibilities or other options I should consider? Remember rule #1 above! biggrin

Thanks in advance!

---------------------

Mobo
EVGA 131-GT-E767-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 SLI3 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX (Product Description)

Video Card
EVGA 012-P3-1472-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) SuperClocked 1280MB (Product Description)

CPU
Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core (Product Description) -- Will be liquid cooled by a Corsair CWCH50-1

RAM
Corsair Dominator 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel (Product Description)

I already have the following components:

- Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s (Product Description) - Though I might buy another and raid-0 this later on, but want to see how it does as a single drive first.
- ATX Case
- Drives (CD/RW, DVD/RW)
- PSU (650 watt) - Tom's Hardware says this is just adequate, but I will likely upgrade this too after I see how/if things run
- OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Thanks guys!

Trevor Bair

Senior Captain, MD-88

DVA8993
Captain, B747-400

Joined on August 14 2010
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"KJBR go Red Wolves"
Washington, DC

188 legs, 845.3 hours
62 legs, 214.0 hours online
188 legs, 845.3 hours ACARS
205 legs, 866.8 hours total

Posted onPost created on January 27 2011 14:21 ET by William Stroud

Looks great other than Raid-0 is lousy for FS, period.

Although people raved about SSDs for FSX, they really have not done much for me, so your HD looks good.

Your biggest gains (and for free!) will always come from overclocking your processor.

William Stroud (DVA8993)

DVA5656
Captain, B757-200

Joined on February 08 2008
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"||||"
Atlanta, GA USA

1,428 legs, 4,795.2 hours
629 legs, 2,134.7 hours online
1,316 legs, 4,471.3 hours ACARS
13 legs, 27.6 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 27 2011 14:24 ET by Alex Dean

Dang!! That is very similar to the system i am running with FSX.(although i have a GTX 570) Works perfect for me, and i get plenty of frames (with autogen/scenery complexity turned all the way up) smile

Alex Dean

Captain, B757-200

DVA3442
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on August 10 2006
Online Double Century Club
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Quincentenary Club

Peoria, IL USA

510 legs, 2,231.3 hours
202 legs, 862.4 hours online
477 legs, 2,103.5 hours ACARS
19 legs, 58.4 hours event

Posted onPost created on January 27 2011 15:13 ET by Ian Hamilton

CPU: I7 2600k - $329.99 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070&cm_re=i7_2600k-_-19-115-070-_-Product

Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 Pro - $184.99 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131682&cm_re=asus_p8p67_pro-_-13-131-682-_-Product

GPU: GTX470 Superclocked - $264.99 - $20 (rebate) = $244.99 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130549&cm_re=evga_gtx_470-_-14-130-549-_-Product

RAM: G Skill Ripjaws X 4GB DDR3 2200 - $129.99 + $2.99 (shipping) - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231436&cm_re=ddr3_2200-_-20-231-436-_-Product

Total: $892.95 (after $20 rebate)

Personally either system looks very good, just depends what you want to do (overclock or not). The Sandy Bridge processors are very good at overclocking and stock would definitely run FSX great.

Ian Hamilton

Senior Captain, B767-300

Posted onPost created on January 27 2011 16:06 ET by Trevor Bair

Thanks Ian. I hadn't considered the 2600K, but from the looks of it, it's probably a better value vs. the other i7 I had picked out. Also, Newegg has a combo deal with that MoBo that saves close to $65. smile

I think I may follow your suggestions -- and that leaves me with money left over for more FS add ons! biggrin

Thanks!

Trevor Bair

Senior Captain, MD-88

Posted onPost created on January 27 2011 18:01 ET by Ian Hamilton

Good to hear, either way you will have a very fast PC! I will be curious to see how your system performs, keep us updated! PS your screen shots always rock, so I am sure that this PC will only bring them out even more!

Ian Hamilton

Senior Captain, B767-300

Posted onPost created on January 28 2011 01:05 ET by Trevor Bair

Thanks again, guys (thanks also to Weston W for his tech advice outside of the 'Cooler!). I ended up getting a combination of the above components and think I'll have a pretty good machine for less than what I was expecting to pay. biggrin

The parts have been ordered and I hope to have something up and running in the next 3 or so weeks once I have time to get it all assembled.

Ian Hamilton wrote:

I will be curious to see how your system performs, keep us updated! PS your screen shots always rock, so I am sure that this PC will only bring them out even more!

I definitely will and thanks! smile

Trevor Bair

Senior Captain, MD-88

DVA8830
Captain, B757-200

Joined on July 12 2010
50 State Club
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Mount Jackson, VA

242 legs, 463.9 hours
1 legs, 2.2 hours online
242 legs, 463.9 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on February 08 2011 08:45 ET by Tom Preziuso

How to I overclock my CPU for optimum performance.
I am currently running a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 and my CPU is an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad Core @ 2.40Ghz and when I max out FSX is will say out of memory in about 2 minutes. I also have 8 GB of RAM but since I am only running a 32 bit Vista operating system it can only handle 4 GB.

ANy suggestions?

Tom Preziuso

Captain, B757-200

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